In many modern electronic device development processes, new technologies used in integrated circuit (IC) modules are “qualified” through a series of formal test stages with different sets of test vehicle hardware and firmware. Generally, the entire process guides a product design or feature from conception as an idea, through functional design and development, to integration with existing devices as a final product. At each stage of development, most design processes test products in development in objective, clinical assessments. FIG. 1 illustrates an exemplary design process.
Specifically, FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating selected development milestones in a product development process 100. As indicated at block 105, process 100 begins with recognition and identification of a problem. In this phase, design engineers (or others) notice a problem or otherwise identify a design goal. Next, as indicated at block 110, the design engineers conceive of one or more basic approaches to solving the identified problem or otherwise achieving the design goal.
Next, as indicated at block 115, the design engineers conceive and design or sketch various implementations to carry out the one or more basic approaches. In this phase, the design engineers begin to create and build concrete structural designs, called “pre-T0 devices” herein, shown as Pre-T0 devices 117. Next, as indicated at block 120, the design engineers conduct pre-T0 stage testing. Generally, testing at this stage sorts out the various design options and often eliminates some designs as unworkable or otherwise inappropriate for continued development.
Accordingly, as indicated at block 125, the design engineers cull the designs under test that do not achieve the identified goal or solve the problem identified at step 105. One skilled in the art will understand that product development and invention are rarely purely linear processes. Throughout the development process, design engineers revise the products under development, based on test results and, sometimes, experimentation. Frequently, testing certain products spark ideas that are further developed in addition to, or instead of, the original solution approaches. Thus, at any point in the process 100, new approaches can be conceived and developed beginning with step 110. The designs that remain after step 125 are shown as T0 devices 127.
Next, as indicated at block 130, the design engineers design and build special test vehicles to test concepts and designs of the T0 devices 127. Generally, special or “custom” test vehicles are specially designed circuits configured to focus on a particular, narrow characteristic of a device under development. For example, the design engineers can design a special thermal test vehicle to test the substrate characteristics of the T0 devices 127. In another example, the design engineers can design a special mechanical test vehicle to test the couplings of the T0 devices 127. These test vehicles are shown as T0 test vehicles 132. Next, as indicated at block 135, the design engineers conduct T0 stage testing on T0 test vehicles 132.
Next, as indicated at block 140, the design engineers eliminate unworkable or otherwise unacceptable designs, narrowing the technologies under active development. The designs that remain after step 140 are shown as T1 devices 142. With a much narrower set of acceptable technologies identified at the conclusion of T0, the design engineers design test vehicles for a T1 stage of testing, as depicted at block 145.
These test vehicles are shown as T1 test vehicles 147. Next, as indicated at block 150, the design engineers conduct T1 stage testing on T1 test vehicles 147. In many instances, T1 stage testing also includes vendor-tooled technologies. That is, in some cases, the design engineers obtain some T1 test vehicles 147 from outside sources, including clients. The T1 test vehicles are nevertheless still configured to allow failure analysis on certain device or technology components, which helps identify some problems with the new technologies.
Next, as indicated at block 155, the design engineers again eliminate unworkable or otherwise unacceptable designs, and generally revise current designs in light of the T1 testing. The designs that remain after step 155 are shown as T2 devices 157. T2 devices 157 are substantially closer to a finished product than, for example, Pre-T0 devices 117. Generally, T2 devices 157 are product-level designs, manufactured on a production line under a quality-control program.
Next, as indicated at block 160, the design engineers conduct T2 testing on the T2 devices 157. The design engineers revise the T2 designs in light of the T2 testing, as indicated at block 165. The final devices are “qualified” as devices for manufacture and distribution, and are shown as devices for manufacture 167. One skilled in the art will understand that the design engineers can also re-test the revised designs, effectively repeating steps 160 and 165 until they settle on a final design.
One skilled in the art will understand that with the rapid pace of technology enhancement, in part due to the demands of the competitive landscape, each new generation of servers and/or chip sets brings a continual advance of new technologies. As such, qualification cycles for processor packaging are frequently in the critical path of product general availability. Accordingly, delays in qualification cycles can therefore cause related increases in development and distribution costs.
Further, as described above, typical processing cycles include development of, for example, T0 test vehicles 132 and T1 test vehicles 147. These custom test vehicles require some design sophistication to match product chip maps, but often those maps change from pass to pass in the design process, requiring extrapolation to bridge the test vehicle results to that of the current device configuration. That is, the device development does not always exactly track the test vehicle development. This causes inaccuracies in the test results.
Further, to help reduce custom test vehicle cost, test vehicles often do not include design attributes that, by engineering judgment, are not believed to drive large sensitivities in technology performance. That is, the custom test vehicles generally only test those design attributes that the design engineers believe will have the most significant impact on the performance of the final design. But, as described above, the design engineers design and develop the test vehicles well in advance of the product, in anticipation of the final product attributes, instead of reflecting the actual attributes. Accordingly, it is often difficult to predict which design attributes are the most important to test or how the interaction of certain design attributes may affect overall performance.
As such, many of the final product characteristics are not embodied in the test vehicles, and therefore the related technology and application interactions are often overlooked. This greatly increases costs when problems are discovered later in the development cycle, because specific interactions between certain attributes can only be observed in the later-developed product (e.g., T2 devices 157) and are not reducible to test vehicles designed to target individual technology aspects.
Additionally, current testing protocols often require costly negative approaches to qualification. That is, engineers often spend a significant amount of design time designing tests to prove that a failure observed using a custom test vehicle cannot happen in the final product. But these added costs seem inherent in the partial-technology approach to custom test vehicles that is prevalent in modern device development.
Therefore, there is a need for a system and/or method for electronic device development that addresses at least some of the problems and disadvantages associated with conventional systems and methods.